The return of Bain

For the final days of the 2012 campaign, the Democratic groups pummeling Mitt Romney on television have returned to the weapon they started with last spring: Bain Capital.

The Obama campaign and its super PAC allies have spent months trashing Romney’s policies and personal values across the airwaves, branding him as a job-killing, abortion rights-opposing, Medicare-privatizing tycoon who disdains working-class and poor Americans.

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But with a little over a week left in the race, several of the Democrats’ top independent spenders are leaning hard into the Bain message, eschewing a pure policy message for a gut-punch reminder that the former Massachusetts governor made his fortune through controversial deals in the private-equity industry.

The late emphasis on Bain, Democratic strategists say, reflects both the potency of Bain as an attack against Romney in general, and the pivotal significance of Midwestern states such as Ohio where the Bain message is especially resonant. Though Romney remains no better than tied with Obama in most national and swing-state polls, he has gained enough ground since the first debate on Oct. 3 that reinforcing Obama’s standing in states such as Ohio and Wisconsin is of paramount importance.

The pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is re-airing one of its most powerful Bain-bashing ads: The spot, titled “Stage,” features an employee laid off by Bain describing how workers at his company were asked to build a stage from which executives announced their plant was closing.

Workers’ Voice, a super PAC backed by the AFL-CIO, rolled out new TV ads in select battleground markets — in Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa — attacking Romney for Bain’s current decision to outsource jobs from Illinois to China.

In addition, the super PAC American Bridge announced Monday that it will air $161,000 in TV and online ads in Ohio targeting Romney’s economic views, including his years at Bain.

Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who advises Priorities USA, said Bain ads have the potential to cut through the fog of commercials from both sides that’s currently cluttering the airwaves with statistics about taxes, job creation, health care and more.

“The Obama campaign, I think, is pushing back very effectively against [Romney’s] efforts to make himself a little less scary on his ideological agenda. We’re playing our part by reminding voters what his values were in business and what they are likely to be as president,” Garin said. “If we were running policy advertising, our ability to add or subtract from all the other gross rating points that people are being exposed to would be on the margins at best.”

Garin came out of the field over the weekend with a new Virginia poll, showing Obama up 3 points against Romney, and said “we’re already seeing it tick back up, the percentage of voters who say that as a businessman, Romney was just looking out for himself and his investors, even at the expense of workers.”